DevTeam

"Some devs "sign" their code comments with various shorthands. Maybe we could find and set these in connection with the corresponding developers?"

The DevTeam is the group of people who develop vanilla NetHack. They have their own mailing lists, and you can reach them by emailing devteam@nethack.org. The core devteam is responsible for NetHack proper, and there are several other people maintaining the different window ports.